BLERA, Italy — For some of the 300 olive growers who toil here in the rolling hills of the Lazio region, making olive oil is a year-round labor of love.
The olives are hand-harvested early in the fall, when they are still green, and are whisked to a cooperative-run mill so they can be cold-pressed within 12 hours.
Nothing is added in the process, following precise standards that produce the extra-virgin olive oil that Italy vaunts as one of its most prized products and most successful global exports.
‘‘We want people to buy the oil because it is a Colli Etruschi oil,’’ which is famed for its quality, said Nicola Fazzi, director of the Colli Etruschi cooperative, founded in 1965.
That is why Fazzi, like producers elsewhere in Italy, is troubled by a draft legislative decree under review in parliament — with a decision expected soon — that would tinker with the penalties for passing off counterfeit olive oil and its origin.
If the decree passes, critics say, commercial fraud and counterfeiting would no longer be considered a criminal offense. Instead, it would be punished by a relatively light fine, effectively incentivizing the wrongdoing, the producers say.
‘‘Much is said about promoting ‘made in Italy,’ but then they try to decriminalize adulterated oil,’’ Fazzi lamented, joining a chorus of critics, including trade associations and farm lobbies, who fear for the reputation of Italian extra-virgin olive oil.
But like so many things in Italy, the truth of the matter is as murky as just-pressed olive oil itself, while the controversy is sizzling.
The government insists that the draft decree has been misinterpreted by its critics and that it actually toughens existing sanctions without decriminalizing false labeling and indication of origin.
On the other hand, those who follow the sector closely say that, at a minimum, the decree would favor industrial-scale producers over smaller cooperatives like Fazzi’s by removing disincentive to large-scale fraud.
That may leave growers, producers and, yes, consumers confused. ‘‘Like all juridical questions, it’s just difficult to understand,’’ conceded Stefano Vaccari, who heads the Agriculture Ministry’s anti-fraud unit.
Yet he and other officials insisted that the decree in fact reinforces punishment of ‘‘ Italian-sounding’’ products — those misleadingly labeled as being of Italian provenance but actually produced elsewhere — which each year amount to about $66 billion in missed earnings for Italy.
‘‘If a label is evocative of Italy, but the oil is not Italian, I can slap on a fine,’’ Vaccari said. ‘‘It’s another step forward, not a decriminalization.’’
One of the few things clear about the proposed measure is that the controversy has everything to do with the laws of supply and demand, and with differing strategies for filling the seemingly bottomless global appetite for Italian foodstuffs.
The pressure to meet that demand significantly increased in 2014, when olive fruit flies and olive tree disease halved olive oil production in Italy.
The troubles fueled record imports — 666,000 tons of olive oil and pomace, a 38 percent increase over the previous year — which Italy’s largest farming lobby, Coldiretti, said ‘‘certainly encouraged fraud,’’ or the temptation to blend domestic and imported oils without proper labeling. Olive oil fraud quadrupled in 2015, the lobby said Friday.
Blended olive oils are fine, as long as consumers are aware of what they are getting. But the real money is in extra-virgin olive oil, whose cost usually starts at about $11 a liter, or twice the cost of blended oils.
Fraud occurs when companies attempt to pass off foreign olive oil as 100 percent Italian.
‘‘There are two sectors in conflict because there is a different vision between ‘made in Italy,’ which means using Italian olives, and ‘product of Italy,’ which means olives from around the world blended with Italian know-how,’’ said Alberto Grimelli, an agronomist who is the editor of the specialist website ‘‘Teatro Naturale.’’
Unless prosecutors can investigate with judicial instruments, like warrants and wiretaps — and not mere fines — widespread counterfeiting and fraud will go unchecked, he said.